(a) Field
The subject matter disclosed generally relates to automated testing equipment for wire harnesses.
(b) Related Prior Art
Circuit analyzers are Automated Test Equipment (ATE) used to validate the configuration and integrity of new electrical circuits being built in a manufacturing environment but also for testing existing electrical circuits in a maintenance environment. For illustration purposes, an electrical circuit consists of a multitude of test points originating from a connector going through an electrical medium such as wires, connectors, passive components, all of such connections linking to other terminations at either another connection point in a connector or a ground connection.
Under the current state of art, these Automated Test equipment need to be connected to each and all of the connections points of the electrical circuit of the SUT in order to be able to validate the integrity of the configuration. This is how all of the test points in the electrical circuit of the system under test (SUT) are properly connected between them or a ground, and to validate the integrity such a circuit, that is that the connection is physically within specific electrical tolerances such as resistive value. These connections between the ATE and the SUT are generally performed with mating interface cable assemblies that are customized on one side with the ATE mating connector and on the other side the SUT mating connector. These interface cables requires a lot of preparation to make sure that they are built to specific configurations, a process which is time consuming, costly and can be somewhat bulky (i.e., big and a large quantity).
In addition to the interface mating cables, a specific test program generally has to be made to the specific configuration of the ATE and the SUT, a process which is also time-consuming and costly. There are however new techniques which were developed to reverse engineer the SUT, also called auto-configuration or auto-learning, which is a test program that has the ability to drive signals on specific connections points while “listening” to pick up such signal at all of the other interconnect points, to determine the interconnectivity of the electrical circuit of the SUT, and the ability to provide a report on a wire-to-wire and wire-to-ground interconnectivity of all connections points.
The present state-of-art therefore requires fully customized interface cables with an associated test program that has the ability to make a validation of the configuration and integrity of the electrical circuit of the SUT. Under the present state-of-art, the ATE will generate a signal, one at a time, to each and all connection points, and sequentially find any and all linked connections by having a method to capture transmitted signals, such as ‘listening’ for the emitted signal, or an indicative method such as a light or sound to measure the connection. Once all connections are detected and the circuit is validated, the ATE will have the ability to measure the resistive values of the connections by measuring the wire-to-wire or wire-to-ground.
One of the main limitations of the existing art is the complexity of testing specific electrical circuit when each individual SUT is different from others for example, in a manufacturing environment where each SUT is customized to unique configuration, or in a maintenance environment where testing of a specific electrical circuit may not be predictable in view of the uncertainty of a failure. In such cases, the complexity created by the large number and diversity of connectors that requires extensive preparation to configure each interface cable and test program, in addition to adding more testing points to the overall ATE to detect all possible interconnection permutations between them, is not efficient and too costly to make the process of using ATE economically viable.
There is therefore a need to develop a new method and apparatus to automate the creation of generic interface connectors and test programs to reduce the time and costs associated with such operations.